A Conversaton with Elizabeth
1998
Reconstruction of reality

From:          Elizabeth
To:            Larry.m.mixson@bvs.com
Date:          2/24/98 3:20pm
Subject:       Reconstruction of reality

At different points in the last few years I've reconstructed periods of my life, deliberately trying to recall salient points. However, I think I always started from about Tampa. Writing you has really intrigued my ability to recall that segment of my life.

What I don't remember is where I was living when I met you and what I was doing for money. If I was on my bike, that leads me to believe that I had already moved out of the professor's house (Fred) and was then living with "red-neck" Ann. I know you used to call me there, and I think now as I write that I was living there because our first "date" was driving out to some park. You had some king of "hot shot" car and I had my van.[1] I thought you were going to drive and you asked to take the van instead. I was looking forward to being taken out and I ended up taking us out. There are a lot of "some kind of's" in this letter--the vagaries of memory. I think from Ann's I eventually moved back in with the professor, having moved out previously. I'm a little unclear.

I didn't leave the house in the country because the lease ran out although that might have been the timing I meshed with. I was getting more involved with in town activities, and I believe a full time job, although I'm a little vague, and I decided to move. Money was tight and I remember that I had already paid the rent for the month ahead but then your relative GAVE a free month to the people moving in. Was there even a lease per se? He was a doctor/resident and could have afforded paying, while I really could have used the money. They got your stove and refrigerator which I sold to them.[2]

The major tumult of my life during that time was the on again and off again relationship with "the professor." I was taking zoology because he and I had discussed "my future." He already had a Ph.D. I really wanted to go to med school, but needed some courses to apply. We mapped it all out and agreed on it. After I was in school several weeks, he THEN said I wasn't spending enough time "with him" or some such nonsense. I think I then moved out. There were several movings in and movings out. The last time I moved out was definitive and that was when I came to live with you in your house in the country. You said, "I will marry you if you will move out and leave him." I was SET about getting away from him that time and stuck to it, but he tormented me after you left. He would send cutesy cards about missing me and wanting me back. Some several years he discovered I was working at AGH, when a friend of his was admitted there, and he started hanging out for coffee in my work cafeteria. He then put the make on a woman I had to work with--he had seen me sitting with her once. I still don't know when you came by, but you did.

You at some point were fascinated with "Wendy" who was with a pre-med student type. I know you took me to the computer building once to show me around.[3]

I don't know what's salient in all this. I don't remember replying to your graduation card, but I do remember getting it. I don't recall where I was when I got it, but you say Alabama (I'm surprised my mail followed me that far as you must not have had my Tampa address. I don't know where you sent it, but it did arrive. I still have it.

I was so mad about you taking the plate and ALL the dishes. The first thing I bought for myself was a set of Mikasa stoneware on sale. My friend really criticized me because I didn't have much money and it was a little costly at the time. I still have some of the pieces.[4]

I love flowers--total nonsequitor. I would very much like to have a garden, but don't and can't because I live in an apartment. I do have a balcony and plant impatiens which do quite well as its shaded. Nothing else will do to well. I saw the botanical gardens in St. Louis when I interviewed there for a faculty librarian position. The indoor rain garden was something else. Tuscaloosa has an arboretum which is outdoors and I used to go there a lot.

Your parents didn't like me and that always "hurt." They thought I was corrupting you, because they somewhat idealized you as a "good boy." My mother said about you, "He looks like he needs a good meal." How long can these messages be.[5] I better go.

[1] I had my ’68 Camaro, she had a Volkswagen Van.

[2] When I moved to Melbourne I didn’t need the stove and refrigerator and told her she could have them.

[3] I was more than fascinated with Wendy. I was in love with her, but she lived with her boyfriend who was in med school and I never could come between them for I saw how much they loved each other. I would say that Wendy was my best friend for several years before I moved to Melbourne. Later Wendy and Sean got married on the same day as my sister, on my birthday in 1973.

[4] I took pretty much everything in the house except for the stove and refrigerator. I didn’t have much in the way of furniture, a couch, a mattress on a plywood platform for a bed, a kitchen table and two chairs, that was about all. I surprised it was the dishes she got mad about for the house was mostly empty.

[5] It wasn’t “my parents” that didn’t like Elizabeth, just Mom. I don’t think Dad cared one way or another.    I don’t remember meeting her mother, only her father and it was the one time I drove her down to Titusville to borrow a car from her father. We only stayed one night and drove back to Gainesville the next day. I was really skinny then at six foot two and weighing only 175 pounds.

Wow, I said I would marry her if she moved out and leave Fred. I sure don't remember telling her that but if she remembered it then it was probably so. Then she did and I didn’t. Our relationship was on such shaky and uncertain ground at the time I couldn’t had imagined marrying her and did not think she would have said yes even if I formally asked her. No, it was not meant to be.

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